A network camera, also commonly referred to as an internet protocol (IP) camera, is a type of digital video camera capable of sending and receiving data over a computer network, such as the Internet. Network cameras are generally used for conducting webcasts, live streaming of events, monitoring areas, conducting surveillance, and similar functions. Network cameras often interact with network video recorders (NVRs), which are specialized computing systems having video recording and video management software executing thereon. NVRs are commonly used to record video captured using a network camera.
NVRs and their supporting infrastructure are costly to maintain. For instance, as more network cameras are added to a network, more NVRs are required to store video recorded and sent from the network cameras. This requires increased bandwidth capabilities, additional server storage, and other computing resources. As such, the use of NVRs does not scale efficiently as more devices are added to the network. Moreover, NVRs are “centralized” such that a single point of failure (e.g., a failure in a data center) can be catastrophic to the uptime of the network.